Restore a VMWare Server from tape backup

[psullyvan]

I'm posing the question if the above can be done. My department head has asked me to make this possible, but I'm afraid this is above my pay grade and need to get advise from the VMware community.

Is it at all possible to restore a complete VMware server from a tape backup.

Regards,

PSullyvan

[khughes]

Welcome to the boards. The tricky part is the backing up of the VMware Server virtual machines. If you could backup the vmdk/vmx files from the computer it is sitting on then yes you could restore the virtual machines because you would just open the vmx file with the vmdk there or just create a new VM and attach the vmdk file and let server build out all the other files such as the vmx. But if the server is up and running then you can't get a lock on that vmdk file to back it up unless you planned to shut it down for "x" amount of time to write it to tape.

• Kyle

[Texiwill]

Hello,

Is it at all possible to restore a complete VMware server from a tape backup.

Yes as long as the following criteria are met:

1) VMs were powered off when the backup was made

2) VMs are not using 'thin' disks... Types of Thick, ZeroedThich, 2Gbsparse are acceptable but not necessarily thin

'thin' disks can be restored but that depends entirely on how the backups were made, what tools were used to 'copy' the vmdks to the backup server, etc. Most fail on this.

Best regards,
Edward L. Haletky
VMware Communities User Moderator, VMware vExpert 2009
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Author of the book 'VMWare ESX Server in the Enterprise: Planning and Securing Virtualization Servers', Copyright 2008 Pearson Education.
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